Wednesday, July 20, 2016

Ian Keenan is on to something

As general election polls tighten, with a majority of voters
disapproving of the Democratic nominee and believing that she should be
criminally indicted, the season of columnists blaming a Democratic loss
on Green Party supporters has begun. But the question this year is
clearer than ever: if you’re trying to win, why nominate Hillary
Clinton? Why, when for months Bernie Sanders was running decisively
ahead of Hillary in head-to-head polls against Republicans, did an
almost unanimous roster of top Democratic legislators, governors, and
their compliant media scribes endorse the weaker general election
candidate?

It's on them, the party big wigs who insisted on Hillary.

They threw the nomination to her even though they're not supposed to be voting until the convention.

Tuesday, July 19, 2016. Chaos and violence continue, Nouri al-Maliki
runs from a public appearance, War Criminal Tony Blair may get sued,
Falluja was no success and now Mosul will be next, Sibel Edmonds and
MEDIA LENS hold the media accountable, and much more.

The Iraq War Families Campaign Group launched an online appeal to the
raise £50,000 to "bring to justice those responsible for the war and
the deaths of our loved ones" earlier today.In the less than a day they have managed to attract 1,428 backers.They now have their sights on raising £150,000 to cover legal costs.

THE MIRROR adds, "It comes weeks after the Chilcot report tore into Mr Blair, other
leading politicians and senior officials over their actions before,
during and after the conflict, in which 179 British service personnel
died." Adam Taylor (WASHINGTON POST) notes, "Blair came under renewed scrutiny after the release of the Chilcot
inquiry. The report included evidence suggesting that he had
misrepresented intelligence ahead of the war. In one memo from July 2002
before the war, Blair writes to President George W. Bush that 'I will
be with you, whatever' -- which many took as implying that he would
support the war, no matter the opposition."

Bully Boy Bush made Nouri prime minister in 2006. He was not a success.
In 2010, Iraq held elections. Nouri lost. He then refused to step
down and brought the country to a halt for eight months -- the political
stalemate.

At the start of the stalemate, May 2010, Peter Kenyon (NPR's MORNING EDITION) spoke with Iraqis including Durgham Sabah:"Why is that? Allawi got the most seats, and the constitution says he
should form the government," Sabah says. "If Maliki had won, you can bet
the government would have been formed in a hurry. What has Maliki done?
Four years and we have no security, no jobs, no water, no electricity."

Maliki has shown so far that he is determined to continue as prime
minister. His insistence prevented the formation of a single Shi’i
coalition before the election, leading to the emergence of Maliki’s own
State of Law (SoL), which he dominates, and the Iraqi National Alliance
(INA), which groups the other important Shi’i parties and personalities,
including the Iraqi Supreme Council of Iraq (ISCI), the Sadrists, the
Badr organization, and former Prime Minister Ibrahim Jafari. Maliki’s
insistence that he must remain prime minister has kept the new
parliamentary Shi’i bloc, the National Coalition—which includes State of
Law and the INA—from speaking with one voice. Instead, the parties in
the INA are negotiating separately with Iraqiya and the Kurdish parties,
and have even established their own diplomatic contacts with other
countries in the region.

So how did he become prime minister for a second term?

Barack Obama gave it to Nouri.

He had the US broker a deal -- the Erbil Agreement -- a contract which
went around the voters of Iraq and gave Nouri a second term in exchange
for power sharing concessions Nouri agreed to.

It was a legal contract and all the parties, including Nouri al-Maliki, signed it.

November 10, 2010, The Erbil Agreement is signed. November 11, 2010,
the Iraqi Parliament has their first real session in over eight months
and finally declares a president, a Speaker of Parliament and Nouri as
prime minister-designate -- all the things that were supposed to happen
in April of 2010 but didn't.

Maliki has lost the trust of much of the political class. At the same
time, the opposition is divided on fundamental issues and on whether to
push Maliki to implement the 2010 Erbil power-sharing agreement or
remove him altogether. The odds that his opponents can muster enough
votes to unseat him are low. Even should they succeed, they are highly
unlikely to find common ground to form a new government, leaving Maliki
as caretaker premier until the next elections in 2014. In the meantime,
the government will find it increasingly difficult to govern and all
Iraqis will pay a price. “There is no question that Maliki has added to his powers during his
six-year tenure, but there also can be no question that a large part of
his success comes from his rivals’ incapacity to thwart him via
institutional means”, says Joost Hiltermann, Crisis Group’s Middle East
and North Africa Deputy Program Director. “Maliki should implement the
2010 power-sharing deal and pledge to step down at the end of his term
for the sake of national unity; his rivals should call off efforts to
unseat him and instead use their parliamentary strength to build strong
state institutions and help ensure that the next elections are free and
fair”.

Nouri refused to follow the contract he signed, the one where Barack gave him a second term.

Instead, he persecuted the Sunnis which led to the Islamic State getting its foothold in Iraq.

Finally, in the second half of 2014, Barack insisted Nouri step down and that Haider al-Abadi become prime minister.

Today, Nouri was supposed to be in Halabja and he was going to give some
sort of 'victory' speech of some kind. Maybe a victory for Iraq that
he's not prime minister?

ALSUMARIA reports
that Nouri had to cancel the engagement. An official with the
Kurdistan Democratic Party explains that a major protest was planned --
one against Nouri -- and that it would have caused a major embarrassment
for Nouri.

In an open letter to Sweden's Foreign Affairs Minister Margot Wallstrom, Sigyn Meder (GLOBAL RESEARCH) notes:Fallujah was seized by IS roughly two years ago and has since then
been bombed by the government. The US-Coalition has also bombed the city
for 22 months. Almost 4000 dead civilians have during this period been
brought to the Fallujah General Hospital, now the only hospital in
Fallujah. Many of the staff have fled and the lack of medicines is
great. The hospital is partially destroyed by the government´s attacks.
For months the city has been encircled by US-trained government forces
with military advisors from both the US and Iran and of feared
pro-Iranian, uncontrolled para-military forces. These are committing
crimes against international law of the same sort as IS: imprisonment,
murder, torture and ethnic cleansing.The severe war crimes and crimes against human rights being committed
by IS, both in areas they control and against innocent civilians in
many Iraqi cities, must not hide or diminish the crimes of the
US-Coalition, the government or the militia.

A real victory over IS requires even the participation of the Sunni
population. Without them Iraq cannot be unified and achieve national
reconciliation.

Falluja, the city the press ignores.

So concerned about 'advancement' on Falluja, no concern about the people.

In January 2014, Nouri al-Maliki began bombing residential areas in populated Falluja. This is a legally defined War Crime.

The press didn't want to call it that or even report on it.

They suddenly found interest in September of 2014 when Haider al-Abadi announced he had ordered the military to cease bombing.

But, here's the thing, the day after his announcement, the bombing resumed.

They all rushed to cover his announcement -- the western media.

They just failed to cover the fact that the bombing never ended.

So is it really surprising that they won't cover the realities of Falluja?

And whistle-blower Sibel Edmonds connects media lies on Iraq back then with current media lies:

The lying never ends and the war never ends.

Today, the US Defense Dept announced:

Strikes in IraqAttack, fighter, and remotely piloted aircraft and rocket
artillery conducted 10 strikes in Iraq, coordinated with and in support
of Iraq’s government:-- Near Baghdadi, two strikes struck an ISIL tactical unit and
an ISIL staging area and destroyed two ISIL vehicles and an ISIL weapons
cache.-- Near Hit, a strike struck an ISIL vehicle bomb-making facility.-- Near Mosul, four strikes struck an ISIL headquarters and destroyed two ISIL vehicles and an ISIL tunnel entrance.-- Near Qayyarah, two strikes destroyed an ISIL headquarters and an ISIL training camp.-- Near Tal Afar, a strike struck an ISIL headquarters.

Task force officials define a strike as one or more kinetic
events that occur in roughly the same geographic location to produce a
single, sometimes cumulative, effect. Therefore, officials explained, a
single aircraft delivering a single weapon against a lone ISIL vehicle
is one strike, but so is multiple aircraft delivering dozens of weapons
against buildings, vehicles and weapon systems in a compound, for
example, having the cumulative effect of making those targets harder or
impossible for ISIL to use. Accordingly, officials said, they do not
report the number or type of aircraft employed in a strike, the number
of munitions dropped in each strike, or the number of individual
munition impact points against a target. Ground-based artillery fired in
counterfire or in fire support to maneuver roles is not classified as a
strike.